Charlton Heston enjoyed a mid-career surge transitioning from heroic historical roles to heroic sci-fi characters. In The Omega Man (1971), he plays an army doctor who struggles to create a cure for the plague that has wiped out most of the human race. In Soylent Green (1973), he's a New York police detective who finds himself marked for murder by government agents when he gets too close to a bizarre state secret affecting the nation's food supply. Heston is paired with James Brolin (in Brolin's first feature film role) in the 1972 disaster film Skyjacked. In Mother Lode (1982) Heston plays a crazed miner who has lived in isolation for many decades searching mountain caves for a chamber of long-lost gold.